Love or survival

Work­ing, as I cur­rently do, for a large com­pany which inter­faces with star­tups always brings up the ques­tion among peo­ple of whether work­ing for a startup or a large cor­po­ra­tion is the best type of job. But over the years, I’ve started to think that to com­pare big vs. small is the wrong approach and that the bet­ter ques­tion should frame whether you love what you’re doing or are doing it for sur­vival. Here’s why.

Why big vs. small is not the right model

When­ever peo­ple in star­tups bring up the ques­tion, there is usu­ally a sus­pi­cion that large cor­po­ra­tions are evil envi­ron­ments. A lot of peo­ple who are in star­tups are tak­ing refuge from the type of drone-like jobs that can, at times, exist in large organization.

I’m not going to come to the defense of such jobs but I started hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about that approach once I put my mind to what hap­pens when a startup grows up and becomes a large cor­po­ra­tion: how does one han­dle such tran­si­tion and how does a com­pany retain its best tal­ent when it becomes larger.

Some com­pa­nies (Google, for exam­ple) look to perks as a way to attract peo­ple: free food, enter­tain­ment, etc… Those are great but I sus­pect that ulti­mately, they are not the thing that retains tal­ent. Busi­ness Insider recently ran a fea­ture story that cov­ered the bal­ance of perks vs. employee hap­pi­ness this week and it appears that the perks are not enough to keep morale up.

At the same time, there can be a lot of fun for employ­ees in large com­pa­nies when they ship a new fea­ture on an exist­ing prod­uct or a brand new prod­uct because the impact that prod­uct or fea­ture has on the mar­ket is mag­ni­fied due to the company’s pre-existing track record. For exam­ple, peo­ple in the tech com­mu­nity may not be excited about Win­dows 7 but peo­ple who worked on it have already had an impact on tens of mil­lions of cus­tomers. That can be quite a rush.

What was inter­est­ing is that all the com­pa­nies listed were large com­pa­nies. Star­tups didn’t seem to be on the list of 25 best tech com­pa­nies to work for. Did that mean that star­tups are not good com­pa­nies to work for?

No.

Star­tups have a lot of excite­ment as the con­tri­bu­tion of every employee can have a marked impact on where the com­pany goes as a whole. It’s a pretty awe­some feel­ing but, on the other hands, star­tups can be all-consuming, with long work hours and some­times frus­tra­tion if a com­pany is not get­ting trac­tion. Life in a startup is no eas­ier than it is in a big com­pany, just different.

So hav­ing estab­lished that star­tups and large com­pa­nies have both advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, it seems that using that model can’t work when a tran­si­tion from one state (startup) to the other (large com­pany) happens.

Do you love the job or the perks?

With that in mind, I started get­ting sus­pi­cious of peo­ple who look at perks as the most impor­tant thing. I was recently talk­ing to R. , a for­mer co-worker at a startup, who was telling me about a friends of ours who went to work at Apple. He told me “he was tasked by Steve Jobs to come up with this prod­uct and deliver it in only a few weeks and he did. So they sent him and his fam­ily to Disneyworld.”

What was inter­est­ing to me in the state­ment was the first part: this per­son was given a seem­ingly impos­si­ble task (deliver big prod­uct on what seems like an impos­si­ble sched­ule) and achieved it. The sec­ond part was much less inter­est­ing but when I recounted that to some­one I know at a large com­pany, his focus was on the reward.

For too many peo­ple, unfor­tu­nately, the reward is all that mat­ters. J., a employee in a large cor­po­ra­tion that has existed for over a cen­tury, was chat­ting with me about recent defec­tions to a com­peti­tor: “you know it’s going to be the same kind of prob­lems at the com­peti­tor so why not jump if the com­pen­sa­tion is bet­ter. They (mean­ing com­pa­nies in that estab­lished indus­try) are all the same.” Unsur­pris­ingly that per­son does not love the job.

Sim­i­larly, I was talk­ing to D., who is cur­rently involved in the early (just post-seed financ­ing) stage of a startup. D. had been a senior exec­u­tive in a very large cor­po­ra­tion for many decades. He was telling me about his frus­tra­tion in the startup: “what I love about a job is the work of con­vinc­ing peo­ple that some­thing is a right idea. In this startup, I pro­pose some­thing and every­one seems to agree it’s the way to go and so we go do it. It’s not as much fun.” Later, D. told me that he was being com­pen­sated mostly on equity and that it would be a really amaz­ing com­pen­sa­tion pack­age once the startup reached a liq­uid­ity event. Once again, this is a per­son who’s not enam­ored with his job but who’s look­ing at the com­pen­sa­tion as the rea­son to stick around.

What it comes down to is that, for a lot of peo­ple, the com­pen­sa­tion mat­ters a lot more than the work. In “The Paper”, one of Ron Howard’s most under-appreciated movies, Robert Duvall plays an edi­tor and, at one point, he says:

Most peo­ple don’t care about what we write. They go to work to pay their mort­gage and put food on the table but they don’t give a damn about what hap­pens in the world.

At the time, this made quite an impres­sion on me because I con­sid­ered it to be a very cyn­i­cal view of the world. But, as time has gone on I have bumped into a lot of those peo­ple, in both small and large com­pa­nies and what I’ve found to be the biggest dif­fer­en­tia­tor between a valu­able employee and one that’s just filler is that the valu­able peo­ple are the one who love what they’re doing.

A per­son who loves his or her job car­ries that love like an infec­tious dis­ease and even­tu­ally spreads it to other peo­ple. For exam­ple, I was recently chat­ting with some­one who works for the New York San­i­ta­tion depart­ment. That person’s job is to deal with how to best dis­pose of New York City’s garbage. Now, most peo­ple would think (and I admit I did before chat­ting with that per­son) that garbage is the most bor­ing sub­ject in the world. But the per­son was so excited about this job that, after a few min­utes of con­ver­sa­tion with the per­son, I started to get excited about garbage.

I’ve met doc­tors, accoun­tants, reg­u­la­tors, sales peo­ple, engi­neers, and taxi dri­vers who spoke in glow­ing terms about their respec­tive jobs and posi­tion and what I’ve dis­cov­ered is that even the most mun­dane and bor­ing sub­ject can turn to magic in the hands of some­one who loves his or her job.

For many years, in inter­views, I’ve asked peo­ple the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “imag­ine I gave you $100 mil­lion with no strings attached today. What would you be doing then?” It’s amaz­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who answer about some­thing dif­fer­ent than the job they apply for. The ones that don’t, or that pro­vide some kind of vari­a­tion on what the job duties are, are true gold and have never failed to exceed my expec­ta­tions (and I have high expectations).

So ask your­self today: do you love what you’re doing? And if you don’t, are you doing it just because of the com­pen­sa­tion and perks? If you’ve answered yes to the last ques­tion, it’s time to start think­ing about what job would get you to answer yes to the first because I can guar­an­tee you that if you fail to answer yes to the first ques­tion, the com­pen­sa­tion and perks will even­tu­ally evap­o­rate and then you’ll ask your­self what happened.

Final note: How to survive

When I tell peo­ple about this, the main objec­tion is “but the stuff I love can’t pay my bills.” It’s true that not all jobs are as remu­ner­a­tive so there is a tran­si­tion from being a job sur­vivor (peo­ple who do it for the com­pen­sa­tion and perks) to being a job lover (peo­ple who do it for love). Before tak­ing on that tran­si­tion, you need to plan for it: do a budget.

Are there things that you’re doing out­side of your job to make it more bear­able to do you job cur­rently? Are there things that you love doing that could be incor­po­rated in your new “more loved” job? Are there things you could do with­out. I’m not say­ing that there won’t be some sac­ri­fices along the way but there is always a bet­ter balance.

The rea­son I tell you to go do the things you love is that, in doing so, you will not only find your work more enjoy­able but you will do bet­ter work and, with bet­ter work, you will even­tu­ally see bet­ter com­pen­sa­tions that will even­tu­ally meet and exceed the ones you had in your sur­vival job. I encour­age you to to read “Hack­ers and Painters” for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how you could make that transition.

In “Oh, the places you’ll go”, Dr. Seuss put it best:

… there’s a good chance

you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.

There are some, down the road between hither and yon,

that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.

But on you will go

though the weather be foul

…

On and on you will hike.

And I know you’ll hike far

and face up to your problems

what­ever they are.

…

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 per­cent guaranteed.)

…

Today is your day!

Your moun­tain is waiting.

So… get on your way!